Thursday, 30 November 2006

I was talking with friends about the premiere of my choral piece Ursi Carmina and it was generally agreed to have been a success, but what people commented on was the light-hearted nature of the text and the fact that they liked my response to it.

Typically I have difficulty writing non-trivial music to light-hearted English words (hence the use of Latin in Ursi Carmina) but think that this is something I should work on. So I've been down loading poems (not all light hearted) by people like Philip Larkin (that poem, the one with the f word), Dylan Thomas and Spike Milligan (!) with a view to trying settings. Not all will see the light of day, but you never know.

Wednesday, 29 November 2006

We had a kick-off meeting last night for the next FifteenB Consort concert. The Consort is a small sub-group of my choir Fifteen. We work without a conductor and sing 1 or 2 to a part. We're doing a concert in March 2007 which is themed around Verse Anthems. Last night we met to sing through a variety of works by Gibbons, Tomkins, Weelkes and Pelham Humphrey and have the makings of a programme. The concert will also include the premiere of a new piece of mine, for voices and organ; its a piece which uses elements of the Verse anthem style. We'll also be reviving one of my solo motets for soprano and organ.

Besides works intended for the concert we also tried out others. We were rather taken with Casciolini's Requiem and that is definitely pencilled in for performance in another concert.

Monday, 27 November 2006

On Saturday night we went to see Glyndebourne on Tour at Norwich Theatre Royal performing Cosi van Tutte in Samantha Potter's revival of Nicholas Hyntner's production from the summmer festival.

From the very first notes of the overture, conductor Rory Macdonald and the Glyndebourne on Tour Orchestra indicated that this would be a fleet, period inspired performance. Not that it was so fleet as to be trivial or so period inspired as to be mannered, but Macdonald and the orchestra brought a welcome lightness and crispness to the accompaniment.

Hyntner's production brought a similar modern take on the traditional. It was an essentially period production, but Hyntner takes the drama seriously and gave us real people with real problems. The 4 lovers all reacted with wonderful realism to the various alarums and excursion through which the plot puts them, leaving them at the end wiser and more unsettled.

It helped that the singing was of a universally high order. The palm must go to Aga Mikolay as Fiordiligi but she was simply the first amongst equals with Jenny Carlstedt (Dorabella), Jonas Gumundsson (Ferrando), Dodion Pogossov (Guglielmo) all singing to a high level. You ceased to worry about the technical aspects of the music (quite a compliment as this opera is not an easy sing) and simply enjoyed the way the singers put over their characters and interacted with each other. The interaction was of a high order of naturalism.

The two schemers, Don Alfonso ( Henry Waddington) and Despina (Claire Ormshaw) were of a similarly high level. Both created appealing characters and Waddington's Don Alfonso was not as forbiddingly off-putting as he can be. Ormshaw's Despina was charmingly earthy.

Vicki Mortimer's set was attractively flexible, depicting a neo-classical room with a terrace, but with flexible shutters and screens. This meant that the scenes were easily able to flow into each other.

Andrew Kennedy was billed as singing Ferrando but he was ill. Jonas Gumundsson was also ill, but bravely sang and did wonders with what was obviously not 100% of his voice. I look forward to hearing him again when he is fit.

Hyntner's view of the Albanian disguises was that the 2 men provide the women with something of a dangerous, over the top, slightly rough edge. Pogossov made the most of this and created a most dangerously attractive character. You could really see why the men both appealed to the women and appalled them. Gumondsson was a little understated, but as he was not 100% fit and had come on at the last minute, it is unfair to be too judgemental.

Cosi van Tutte is a long opera, but Hytner, Potter and their cast created a wonderfully involving show which mixed musicality of a high order with involving drama. What more could you want?

The audience at the Coliseum on Friday was numerous but the piece certainly was not a sell out. Also, the average age seemed to be pretty high, the production did not seem to be attracting a young crowd. And judging by the audience behaviour, there were a lot of people who did not come to the theatre regularly, which is to be encouraged. Though I did have the suspicion that they came for the G&S and this visit would not necessarily encourage them to explore other bits of the ENO canon - but you never know.

On Friday we went to see Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers in Martin Duncan's new production at the London Coliseum. Designed by Ashley Martin-Davis in picture-book colours (in fact the set itself was a picture-book) it looked handsome in a 1950's kitsch sort of way. Moving the time to the 1950's worked well enough, but I'm not sure why it was necessary.

More problematical was the piece itself. The Gondoliers was the final major piece that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote before their serious argument over the Savoy Theatre carpet. But even in The Gondoliers their collaboration was a little rocky, with Sullivan pressing for a more serious plot.

He got it, in a way, because the first 20 minutes of the opera are set to continuous music - the longest such span in the full length Savoy Operas. And Gilbert's topsy-turveydom (which was one of his principle strenghts), is rather watered down. Many commentators coo excitedly over the opening section, but though Sullivan's music is undeniably attractive it does not really go anywhere dramatically. I have yet to see a production which convinced me, I'm always so relieved when the Plaza Toros and the Grand Inquisitor come onto the scene!

Of course another problem is that there are too many leads, so no-one ever really gets a chance to develop their character. This is one of the respects in which, Gondoliers prefigures Utopia Limited. Utopia requires a serious number of comic leads and its main joke is a country being run as a limited company. Similarly Gondoliers requires rather a lot of leads and there is a minor, undeveloped plot strand which involves the Duke of Plaza-Toro becoming a Limited company; also the opening of Act 2, where we see the Gondoliers republican principals in action when running their new country, pre-figures Utopia.

Unfortunately in The Gondoliers Gilbert never really carrys any of this through. There is an enormous amount of good music, but the producer must work hard to make us care for it. This, Martin Duncan did not do. In the opening scenes of Act1, the chorus seemed to be having a good time but neither diction nor production were sharp enough. The small chorus solos needed a lot more work in putting over the words, drama and music.

David Curry and Toby Stafford-Allen worked very well as the 2 Gondolier leads, they made an attractive double act and put things across nicely. It is no fault of theirs that Gilbert's book lacks bit, he is not really satirising anything at all here. They were well partnered by Sarah Tynan and Stephanie Marshall, but none of them really made us care, or sit up and take notice.

This only happened when the Plaza Toros appeared (Geoffrey Dolton, Duke, Anne Murray, Duchess, Rebecca Bottone, their Daughter). It scarely mattered that the Duchess's part hardly suits the lower registers of Anne Murray's voice (the part was written for one of those forbidding contraltos that are an essential part of the G&S canon). She put the part over so well that it was an object lesson. Dolton made a wonderfully put-upon duke. Bottone and Robert Murray, as Luiz, had a wonderful time with their love scene. Here Gilbert and Sullivan approached the more sophisticated european operetta/opera comique and made one long for more in this vein.

But the person who dominated the stage was Donald Maxwell as the Grand Inquisitor. Got up in an amazingly stylishly outrageous costume (complete with silver heels) he put over the words effortlessly and dominated the stage without ever quite taking all the limelight from his fellows.

Act 2 worked far better, perhaps because there were a greater number of comic numbers, but of course, Act 2 isn't really about anything. Gilbert does nothing to develop either of his main ideas (the limited company or the Gondoliers republican principles) so we are left with a series of bravura comic pieces.

Richard Balcombe conducted a small-ish ENO orchestra. The results were attractive and flexible but perhaps could have been sharper. Though this was an enjoyable evening in the theatre, there were too many moments when both Balcombe and Duncan seemed to be content for things to jog along.

Perhaps I'd have been more sympathetic in a smaller theatre - seeing G&S in the Savoy Theatre made me realise how well it works in a more intimate venue. But I think that all the show really needs is a bit of polishing. I hope that ENO are not content to leave it as it is, but work at what they've got.

Friday, 24 November 2006

In an age when many establishments are cutting down on their financial committment to classical music, it is heartening to read about expansions. Merton College, Oxford, are setting up a new choral foundation with Peter Phillips, of Tallis Scholars fame, as the musical director. From 2008/09 the college will be offering up to 16 choral scholarships. Initially the choir (mixed) will sing 2 services per week. At the moment services are sung by volunteer choristers directed by an organ scholar.

David Hill, currently musical director of St. Johns College, Cambridge, is stepping down next summer to take over the BBC Singers. Currently the singers are directed by Stephen Cleobury (of Kings College, Cambridge) who becomes conductor Laureate. Though Cleobury managed to direct the singers in addition to his existing commitments, Hill evidently does not feel that the can balance everything; he is also musical director of the Bach Choir.

And Andrew Manze is stepping down from the English Concert and his place being taken by Harry Bicket; Bicket joined the orchestra in 1984 as harpsichordist. This is his first directorship of an orchestra, in recent years he has made his name as a conductor of operas, mainly baroque, at such venues as the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago, Covent Garden and the Bavarian State Opera. It was Munich who gave him his first big leg up when he took over from Charles Mackerras when Mackerras objected to the rather avant garde nature of the Richard Jones production in a Handel opera. Since then, Bicket has conducted a number of Handel's operas both there and in other venues.

Thursday, 23 November 2006

One of the reviews of the new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers at the London Coliseum commented that to be really successful, a production had to have an angle; implying that you could no longer present the operas straight.

This let me to wondering about what makes a successful G&S production in the modern world. Inevitably, size matters and doing the Savoy Operas in a theatre the size of the London Coliseum is not ideal. But it can work.

When I first came to London in the mid 1980's, I saw one of the last revivals of the old ENO production of Patience, a production that had started out life in the Sadlers Wells Theatre before their move to the Coliseum. It was attractively Pre-Raphaelite and thanks to strong performances from a cast that included the incomparable Derrick Hammond Stroud as Bunthorne, it worked pretty well.

But this type of production was disposed of during the Powerhouse era. To be replaced by Jonathan Miller's 1920's dance extravaganza production of The Mikado. The success of this production was based on the sheer entertainment value of the staging. Miller's theatrical brilliance disguised the fact that it was hardly a production of The Mikado at all.

This style of production was a dead-end, it was not the way forward for staging G&S in the Coliseum. This was shown by Ken Russell's appallingly interventionist version of Princess Ida. But the problem wasn't just G&S, this was the period when the Coliseum management seemed to lack confidence in operetta. Their proposed production of La Belle Helene for Leslie Garrett was turned into a radical re-write, which did not really work. That having confidence in the product was the way forward was shown by Scottish Opera who mounted La Belle Helene around the same time, with Anne Howells. The production played the text straight, no messing about and was extremely well received.

This finally seems to have filtered down to the current management at ENO as Martin Duncan's new production seems to play things relatively straight. And hurrah for that. We're going to see it on Friday (tomorrow) so I'll be able to report back. But I rather gather that the old hands (Donald Maxwell, Anne Murray et al) rather show up the youngsters when it comes to putting the show over.

This is the area where time and effort need spending; not on fancy productions but on training in the basics of performing operetta. (But that's another moan)

Wednesday, 22 November 2006

Gerald Martin Moore has a fascinating article on Beverley Sills, looking back at her different teachers. One comment stuck out, he notes how he found her cadenza in the Mad Scene from Lucia different to anyone elses but does not say why. Instead he segues into an explanation that the traditional cadenza owes a lot to Mathilde Marchesi and that Sills's teacher, Estelle Liebling was one of Marchesi's last pupils. A fascinating chain in itself, but is Martin Moore implying that the cadenza Sills uses owes something to the chain leading back to Marchesi?

In a review of Opera Australia's revival of Francisco Negrin's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare, Deborah Jones comments that Christopher Field's Tolomeo was more psychopath than drag queen, but a bit of both. Well, the camp, drag queen element is certainly a modern gloss on the character and not something Handel intended. The role was written for a woman and would have been no camper than any of the other many travesti roles that Handel wrote. The camp, effeminate aspect of Tolomeo seems to have crept in with the usurpation of the role by counter-tenors.

George Petrou and his Patras Orchestra have just performed Handel's Tamerlano in Athens. Interestingly, they cast a high-baritone as Bajazet, on the basis that the role lies low for a modern tenor. John Svolos seemed to concur and I will be interested to hear the recording.

The Opera Theatre Company in Ireland have just done Fidelio in a jail. Mind you, unlike Pimlico Opera's productions this jail was a museum (it stopped being a jail in 1920). I suppose doing Fidelio with real prisoners might be a little too near the bone.

I see that there has been a falling out in Pesaro. The scholar, Philip Gossett, who was in charge of the new edition of Rossini's works, was critical of the festival's artistic decisions and seems to have been fired. He is off to Barenreiter, so we can look forward to 2 competing editions of Rossini's works - ho hum.

The premiere of Stephen Hartke's The Greater Good at Glimmerglass seems to indicate that Hartke and his original librettist fell out. The libretto is described as being adapted from an original libretto by Philip Littell. Oops, such an event must be rather like having a divorce, and just as divorce is not good for the children, having composer and librettist disagree can't be good for the health of the opera.

Still in America, the New York City Opera did a new production of Handel's Semele and just as the current ENO production (by Robert Carsen) updates it to the 21st century and uses the British Royal family as a model, so the NYCO production (by Stephen Lawless) updates it to the Kennedy White House - very neat indeed.

Finally the We Hear that... column includes some rather tantalising glimpses of future productions. Theres a new Tim Albery Les Troyens in Chicago with Susan Graham and Anna Caterina Antonacci - now, we've never visited Chicago....Plus, Opera North are doing Keiser's Croeusus, definitely a must see I think. Keiser ran the Hamburg Opera House when Handel first joined the staff, before he left for Italy. Then Laurent Pelly is doing L'Elisir d'Amore at Covent Garden and Nicholas Hyntner is doing Don Carlos there as well. This latter no longer with Angela Georghiu as Elisabeth, oh well, can't win them all but any new Don Carlos is fabulous really.

Then further in the future Birtwistle's Minotaur is being done at the ROH in 2008 with John Tomlinson in the title role and Christine Rice as Ariadne, produced by Stephen Langridge. Something really to look forward to.

We're off to see ENO's new production of The Gondoliers on Friday, which set me to thinking about issues of surtitles and G&S. Generally I'm a great believer in surtitles.

They have transformed my opera going when the opera is in a foreign language. Partly that's because I never quite do my home-work and benefit immensely from a prompt telling me what the characters are saying. This is particularly true of the longer operas such as Wagner. My first Wagner experiences were very mixed, due to the sheer length and the inability to hear the singers - very definitely Rossini's Good moment s and bad quarters of an hour.

And of course, these early Wagner experiences were in English, sung by ENO. And it was generally impossible to hear the words. So I am sympathetic to using surtitles in some English language productions.

But surely G&S is about communication. Sullivan, sometimes prompted by Gilbert, went to great lengths to ensure that the words were audible. And several generations of G&S specialists have ensured that they are, even in a barn like the London Coliseum. Some of these specialists, like Valerie Masterson, went on to sing in serious opera. But the training stuck, I can still remember Masterson's Marschillin at the Coliseum where you heard nearly every word - in a role that typically sopranos get over 1 in 3 if you are lucky.

So on Friday I am going to do my best to ignore the surtitles and concentrate on the singers. If they can't project the words then, frankly, they shouldn't be singing Gilbert and Sullivan

Monday, 20 November 2006

Some years ago I had some research done into my Hugill ancestors. It turns out that they were based for many centuries in North Yorkshire, in an around Stokesly. We even managed to find a church-yard full of 17th and early 18th century ancestors in a little church-yard at Whorlton, where the family farm was at that time. But my ancestors were prolific (one had 13 children) and my branch were junior and rather itinerant, one was baptised in Whitby and my father's family settled in Stokesly and Stockton.

I have been reading Roz Southey's fascinating book Music-Making in North-East England during the Eighteenth Century and in the chapter on churches and organists came across William Howgill who was the organist at Whitehaven and his daughter Ann, who was organist at Staindrop in the late 18th century. Howgill is one of the early forms of the name Hugill so I must now go scurrying back to my family tree to see if there are any William's on it.

Saturday's concert went off very well. A substantial number of ex-members of London Concord Singers joined the choir and orchestra for the concert at St. Giles Cripplegate on Saturday. Contrary to gloomy expectations, when the ex-members joined the current members of the choir to perform Handel's Birthday Ode for Queen Anne we were left with a very, very substantial audience. So substantial in fact, that we had run out of programmes and ran out of wine at the interval; still, if there were going to be problems, they were good problems to have.

Quite a number of former members came along to listen to the concert and it was lovely catching up with everyone. In the first half we gave the premiere of Ursi Carmina my new piece setting poems by Alexander Lenard from his Pooh translation (well worth exploring if you are a Pooh loving Latinist!). The performance went very well and was well received. Friends in the audience were extremely complimentary about the work.

After the concert some 80 of us went to TAS Restaurant in Farringdon for a celebratory meal.

Then on Sunday morning it was business as usual, Lassus Missa Quinti Toni and Palestrina's De Profundis at 11.30am Latin Mass at St. Mary's Church, Cadogan St., Chelsea. Then tonight we start rehearsing for our Christmas concert on Dec 21st - no rest for the wicked!

Tuesday, 14 November 2006

Well, last night was the final rehearsal before the London Concord Singers anniversary bash on Saturday. Saturday morning we are joining up with some 2 dozen former members of the choir to rehearse Handel's Birthday Ode for Queen Anne. Then at 6.00pm we have our anniversary concert at St. Giles Cripplegate in the Barbican.

The current choir will be singing Harris's Faire is the Heaven and Naylor's Vox dicentis:Clama and premiering my new piece Ursi Carmina (Bear Songs) written specially for the occasion. Then we'll be joined by the former members and an orchestra (specially recruited for the occasion) to sing the Handel and Mozart's Sancta Maria, Mater Dei. Besides the former members who are singing there are more who will be in the audience. It should be a great occasion. The reason for the early start of the concert, is that afterwards we all go off for a celebratory bash.

Monday, 13 November 2006

Sunday, being Remberance Sunday we did a requiem mass at St. Mary's Cadogan Street. This time we did the Palestrina Requiem, a lovely piece with 2 tenor parts. For the first time we actually included Palestrina's setting of the Offertorium, thus doing the mass setting complete. Its a wonderful mass and I can't understand why it is not better known.

On Saturday we went to see Handel's Orlando at Sadlers Well Theatre. Independent Opera produced it in the theatre's Bayliss Studio. It was one of the most satisfying Handel opera productions that I have seen in a long time, a review will occur in due course.

But as usual with programmes of this length we had some oddities regarding intervals and start times. The opera started at 6.30pm and there was about 2 hours 45 minutes of music in 3 acts. So we could reasonably have expected there to be 2 intervals and the performance would have finished around 10pm, not too bad at all. Instead, there was 1 interval (after Act 1), leaving Acts 2 and 3 to be performed together, albeit with an extended pause between them. With a finish time of around 9.35pm. Most unsatisfactory, why do theatres shy away so much from 2 intervals in long 3 act operas.

Friday, 10 November 2006

Faure's incidental music to Maeterlinck's play was written for an 1898 production in London, starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She went on to play the role again in 1904 opposite Sarah Bernhardt (in fact they alternated roles). The 2 actresses evidently kept playing practical jokes on each other, there are stories about Frogs (Bernhardt had a horror of them) and raw eggs. Goodness knows what the actual performances were like.

Last night we were at the Cadogan Hall for a concert in the S.W. Mitchell Capital Virtuoso Piano Series. This is a series of concerts being given by the London Festival Orchestra. Each of the concerts in their 2006/7 series begins with one of Rossini's String Sonatas and then the orchestra accompany a distinguished soloist in piano concerto. After the interval the soloist plays a solo piano work and then an orchestral piece completes the evening.

Last night, French virtuoso Emmanuel Despax played Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the LFO conducted by their artistic director Ross Pople. The concerto benefited from the orchestra's chamber orchestra size (6 first violins, 6 2nd violins) so that they never came close to overwhelming the piano, which can happen. Despax is only 23 and studied at the Yehudi Menuhin school. His playing was strong, yet wonderfully poetic; he is a fine, expressive pianist and is obviously at home in this repertoire. His playing had a maturity which belied his age. After the interval he gave a fine performance of Liszt's Ballade No. 2. Then the orchestra gave a highly accomplished and poetic account of Faure's Suite from Pelleas et Melisande; the incidental music that he wrote for the London performancjavascript:void(0)Publishes of Maeterlinck's play.

The series continues with some other attractive programmes: Pascal Roger playing Ravel's G minor Piano Concerto with Debussy's Estampes and Dvorak's Czech Suite; Michael Roll playing Schumann's Piano Concerto with Beethoven's Six Bagatelles and Mussorgsky's A Night on the Bare Mountain.

Part of the attraction is the chamber nature of the orchestra, which alters both the balance between soloist and orchestra and between strings and wind. The new Cadogan Hall is an ideal venue for music of this size.

Tuesday, 7 November 2006

Stanford's settings of the Evensong Canticles are so ubiquitous that I was surprised to find references to his Communion settings. These are less frequently performed and at first, I had assumed that he never wrote any. I finally got around to acquiring a copy of his Communion Service in C and it makes fascinating reading.

It is perfectly aligned to the traditional Anglican communion service from the Book of Common Prayer. There is no Kyrie as such, just the responses Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law. to the 10 commandments. The Credo and Sanctus are pretty much as might be expected, but there is no Agnus Dei and the Gloria comes at the end.

As anyone who knows the Book of Common Prayer will understand, this is very much the structure of the standard Anglican service period. The institution of a Eucharistic service on the lines of the modern Mass is very much a modern thing.

Monday, 6 November 2006

Tonight's London Concord Singers rehearsal means that its under 2 weeks to go to our Anniversary concert at St. Giles Cripplegate on 18th November, including the premiere of my piece written for the occasion Ursi Carmina (Bear Songs).

A piece of good news, we have a new venue for our recording next year. After much searching around the recording Engineer has come up with a church in North London which he has used before and likes - great. All I have to do now is finalise details of performers etc.

Thursday, 2 November 2006

When listening to contemporary music it is not infrequent for me to come across pieces that I admire or that I like; the two are not incompatible and some piece I admire AND like. But there is another, much smaller group of pieces; these are the ones which I wish that I could have written.

Most pieces that I like and admire, such as Thomas Ades's opera The Tempest are so far from my compositional obsessions (and technical ability) that not only could I never imagine composing them, but I can find no reason to. For me, they don't scratch the compositional itch, that piece of the unconscious where ideas for pieces are created. It is hard to describe this process. Of course, it is different in all people; for some, composition is a very technical process. But for me, a piece begins with an idea or a shape; I have often thought of composition as being like archeology, where you are excavating, trying to discover a piece's natural and essential form. When it works you create something that feels right, as if it had always existed and just needed to be discovered. I once saw a film which included a scene of someone scraping away at a bank of sand, to gradually discover a statue. For me, discovering a new piece of music is like this. Sometimes the process is complex, and the first go does not work.

Just occasionally I come across a piece of contemporary music which appeals to this part of me, which scratches this particular itch. Not only do I like and admire it, but it feels right; I wish I'd written it. There is a wonderful motet by James MacMillan called Tremunt videntes angeli which fits into this category. I first heard it on a disc by the choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh and was bowled over. I heard it live at the BBC Singers concert in St. Giles Cripplegate as part of the BBC James MacMillan weekend. I was bowled over again. It's not a piece I could reasonably expect to have written but Oh Boy, do I wish I had.

I was similarly affected this summer at the Edington Festival when the Nave Choir sang 3 movements from James Macmillan's Mass. As we overheard the rehearsals for this, over a span of a few days, we came to know the music well before the performance; at the service, its effect was overwhelming. Now I have finally bought the CD of the work recorded by Westminster Cathedral Choir, for whom it was written. Listening on disc, I am similarly affected by this wonderful work. What I want to do next is hear it live in Westminster Cathedral.

I imagine that part of the explanation for the effect of music on me is MacMillan's use of plainchant and his own sense of the sacred. But there is an indefinable something more. Something which, when you try to put it into words sounds a bit ridiculous.

Wednesday, 1 November 2006

Next season will be Grange Park Opera's 10th season at Northington Grange, in Hampshire and to celebrate they have announced a programme of 3 operas and 2 concerts. They have sent subscribers a taster CD which not only includes extracts from the 5 programmes (taken from commercial CD's) but also has a spoken introduction to Grange Park itself.

The CD starts with an intro to the Grange and a description of the house and its surroundings by Wasfi Kani, Grange Park Opera's artistic director. There are then a series of interviews with various people involved with the opera, singers, back-stage crew etc. These interviews are edited together in a form that gives you an aural picture of backstage at the opera house. Those interviewed include Lord Ashburton (who owns the house) and Michael Morley (who founded the festival with Wasfi Kani) and there is even an interview with the man who does the roses! Finally Alan Titchmarsh (a long time festival supporter) describes the surrounding landscape. This section finishes with each person saying what the festival means to them.

Then Wasfi introduces excerpts from each of next season's operas. I Capuletti e i Montecchi, which is to be performed at Neville Holt, is represented by Marilyn Horne singing one of Romeo's arias. The Magic Flute is represented by In diesen Heilgen Hallen from the Colin Davis recording and Prokofiev's The Gambler by excerpts from Act IV from Valery Gergiev's Mariinsky recording. Finally Falstaff is introduced by a snippet from Sir George Solti's recording, with Alfredo Kraus and Mirella Freni as the young lovers.

At Grange Park The Magic Flute will be directed by Stephen Medcalf and conducted by Richard Balcolmbe. Jeremy White (long standing regular at Covent Garden) is Sarastro and Elizabeth Atherton Pamina. David Stout, recently seen to great effect in ETO's Baroque season (he was Pluto in Orfeo and Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas) will be Papageno.

The Gambler will be designed and directed by David Fielding (whose production here of Tchaikovsky's The Enchantress was very memorable) and conducted by Andre de Ridder. The fine cast includes Andrew Shore as the General and Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts as Alexei, very different to his role as Nicias in Thais this year.

Falstaff is being conducted by Stephen Barlow and directed by Daniel Slater with Robert Poulton in the title role, William Dazely as Ford and Anne Marie Owens as Mistress Quickly.As next year is a celebration year, there is also a concert with the LSO; represented by excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, both the Tchaikovsky and the Prokofiev. Besides these 2 works the concert will include Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Finally the disc concludes with Andreas Scholl singing Where'er you walk from Handel's Semele, as the Grange is also putting on a concert performance of the oratorio with Rosemary Joshua in the title role, Hilary Summers as Juno and Ino, Stephen Wallace as Athmas and conducted by Christian Curnyn. And before you comment, yes I know that Where'er you walk is a tenor aria, but Scholl sings it so brilliantly that you can hardly complain.

Quickening:

Songs by Robert Hugill to texts by English and Welsh poets now available from Amazon

four delicate, sensitive settings of Ivor Gurney, drawing performances of like quality. - it is Rosalind Ventris’s viola, weaving its way around and between the voice and William Vann’s piano, that is most beguilingGramphone magazine Jan 2018